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“Frank Ocean makes the decisions where Frank Ocean is concerned”

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 21:30:00 +0000

Frank Ocean catapulted himself out of obscurity this year to become one of the most talked-about recording artists — in part because of a revelation of same-sex heartache in the liner notes of his breakout album, "Channel Orange," which he posted on his Tumblr a couple of weeks before its July release, and in part due to his public spats with the notoriously combative Chris "Breezy" Brown. Now the 25-year-old soulful singer-songwriter, whose lyrical candor, evocative storytelling ability, and musical dexterity have earned him hyperbolic comparisons to an incredible, if strange array of talent — Stevie Wonder, Prince, Joan Didion, J.D. Salinger — is being honored at this Sunday's Grammy Awards with six nominations, including best new artist, record of the year and album of the year. And he very well might clean up. Though Ocean, whose real name is Christopher Breaux (he changed it in 2010), tends to be guarded around reporters — you might say stingy and not a little prickly — he did grant the New York Times Magazine's Jeff Himmelman an interview, who extracted what there was to extract from the exacting, arguably megalomaniacal R&B star. Here is what he got:

Lindsay Lohan profile proves the value — and rarity — of access

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 16:16:00 +0000

It's pretty rare to learn anything about a celebrity from a celebrity story. Glossy magazines, settling for less and less access, read volumes into what the starlet of the moment ate for lunch, but never seem to catch the stars off-guard. At the moment when appetite for celebrity gossip has never been more ravenous, celebrities themselves have been trained within an inch of their lives (everyone's always the happiest they've ever been), and publicists know to limit the conversations just to lunch.

So it's a surprise of sorts that Lindsay Lohan — who has been burned by her own volubility in print before, after admitting to drug use, then recanting it — was followed through July for the New York Times Magazine, in a lengthy story about the set of her upcoming film, "The Canyons," a tiny, Kickstarter-funded independent film directed by Paul Schrader.

Junot Díaz, feminist

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 16:00:00 +0000

A lot has been written on Junot Díaz lately. For several weeks starting in September, he appeared in at least twelve publications that showed up at my house. He was in everything from the unsolicited Time Magazine, apparently intended for my fifteen-year-old son, to Vogue, where Díaz appeared in costume, dressed as a member of Edith Wharton’s circle. Díaz’s face smiled out from Entertainment Weekly, and he appealed for understanding from the pages of the New York Times Magazine. Online, the Guardian Blog stated that the term “genius” was inadequate praise. Seemingly everywhere, his big glasses, smooth head, trim beard, and tentative smile greeted me. If Andy Warhol still lived, he would use Junot Diaz as a subject.

Did I make it?

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 17:01:00 +0000

“The best years are the forties; after fifty a man begins to deteriorate,
but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy.”—H. L. Mencken

* * *

TODAY—or rather tonight; at 9:26 pm EST, to be precise—the transiting Sun will conjunct my natal Sun for the fortieth time. Which means, in layman’s terms, that it’s my birthday. I am now, somehow, 40.

There is no astrological significance to my new age (pun intended). The three overlapping transits that together comprise what Robert Hand calls “the crises of middle age”—Saturn oppose Saturn, Uranus oppose Uranus, Neptune square Neptune—begin later, at age 42. The real biggie, the Uranus opposition, won’t start for me until April 14, 2016. As far as horoscopy goes, there’s so reason today should be any different than November 13, 2011, or November 13, 2010.